[2] She was Professor of Zoology and the head of the Biology Department at Barnard College.
Hughes performed the first complete dissection of the cranial nerves of the dogfish and made studies of hapoidy, parthenogenesis, hermaphroditism, and the life cycle of insects.
[3] She came to Woods Hole in the summer of 1918 as a student from Grinnell College and was enrolled in the embryology course at the Marine Biological Laboratory.
In 1925, she returned to the MBL as an Independent Investigator in Zoology and continued in this capacity for several years.
In 1928–1929, she was awarded the Sarah Berliner Research Fellowship from the American Association of University Women.